hi all. first off, a confession: i have not been caring for my brugmansias as i should have been. there was a time when i used to give them time every day to talk to them, water them if necessary, check for critters, etc. that was long ago, when i had a part-time job and lived with my parents. now i live in an apt. with my mate and work full-time (i've had the plants for maybe 4 years now) and i don't have nearly as much time on my hands as i used to. in fact, i initially wasn't sure i could care for them upon moving and had left them at my mom's house.
unfortunately, she didn't pay much attention to them outside of watering them, and they got a nasty case of whiteflies. after living on my own for 1-2 months, she asked me what to do with them. it was getting cold out and she didn't have a place for them inside her house. i agreed to come over and see how they were doing and possibly take them. one of them had dropped all its leaves, but looked healthy otherwise. the other was in sad condition. there were whiteflies literally covering the underside of some of the leaves. i could hardly bare to see it. they were all over the poor thing. i couldn't let that go on, so i took the brugs to my apt. and began a concerted effort to get rid of the whiteflies. i've succeeded in getting them under control. basically i just kill them with my fingers, carefully so as not to alert any others that might be on the same leaf. i don't like chemical stuff, so this is my only surefire method and i don't mind it. however, this kills the flies only. i can see the eggs, but i don't know how to kill them and i'm wondering if there is some non-harsh way to do this?
also, i'm wondering, they've never bloomed, even when i took very good care of them for the first year or 2 that i had them. my only thought about why this could be is that i didn't fertilize them enough, because i was definitely watering them enough, giving them enough sun, etc. now that i'm getting them back on the road to health, and trying to care for them better in general, i'd like to try and see if i can get them to bloom. but my other problem is that i don't want to have to repot them again. i did so last summer and they're in pretty big pots now. repotting, living in an apt. now, would be a bit of a hassle. also, it's a 1-bedroom and there's hardly room for them as it is. so my basic dilemma is:
is it possible to get them to bloom without encouraging too much growth?
thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
I don't know too much about them. I have one brug I got from Winder. For whitefly, the best thing is to spray the undersides of the leaves every couple days with safer's soap or equivilent. For a larger infestation it's good to use thurigensis bacteria along with it. The BT kills the crawler stage of the whitefly. You can get BT at many garden shops under various trade names.
Hi... Brugs are plants that want to grow. I live in Ohio, zone 5 where it gets pretty cold. What we do here is cut them back. Some people overwinter them in the garage where its cool and dark and keep them somewhat dormant and then when it's warm and sunny they grow like mad and flower. They are heavy feeders. Give them all the fertilizer you can (when they start to grow again). I had a brug that when fall came I put it into my greenhouse. It kept growing, got spider mites, lost most of it's leaves. I just left it there... it didn't bloom. I then realized they like to be cut back (which is cool, the cuttings root really easy) at least up here. the pots are all right. They don't need big pots but do need lots of water. I used bug spray on mine to kill the mites. but what you do is fine.
I bet if you cut them back they'll flower. (some people cut them back to where they ain't much more than a nub). I leave mine bigger since... like now... I cut them back and have them in a south facing window in my apartment and they are growing like crazy. Hope that helps...
-bp
To get rid of the whiteflies you need to use Neem oil, there's nothing wrong with the stuff, its a natural product and it works reeeally well.
To get it to flower keep up the fertilizer feedings, they take lots of fertilizer. You can choose to top them off at a certain height to encourage bushiness and flowering.
Even when you dont see bugs on your plants you should get used to spraying neem oil on your plants occasionally to discourage critters from getting out of hand.
I got another brug question: can you move one that is really established in the ground? I got one about 10ft tall been in the ground for a year or more, and it is running out of space. I am guessing that it will be easily moved but ayone got more information?
I found brugs to be easily rooted so I'd say you will have little to no problem moving it. Neem is good for whitefly but so is safer's soap. Be sure to hit the undersides of the leaves. BT bacteria is great but takes a while to work.
Brugs are easy to move and to root.
I brought 2 indoors (1 from the yard which was about 6 feet tall cut back to about 4 feet tall and 1 from a large planter) into smaller pots and had them blossom while indoors this winter. From these two I have generated numerous rootings and now I have 10 plants in the ground and 3 in pots.
A few suggestions to increase the rooting rate and to avoid rot.
While they are easy to root, they will rot on occasion in water.
Cold water won't root shit.
Warmer is better.
Warmer water holds less oxygen so an aquarium bubbler helps.
This plant repsonds well to IAA rooting hormone, liquid or powder (Salvia does NOT!).
Finally, slightly woody stems root better than solely green fleshy stems.
And many in the water at once seems to work better than one cutting per container. The last batch taken to the yard was a set of 8 cuttings made at once. Woo hoo!